What’s going on with H-1B visas? The answer is suddenly very confusing. Over the weekend, banks, technology companies, and immigrant workers panicked after Trump administration officials said that the H-1B, a specialized visa for highly skilled immigrant workers in technical industries, would require a $100,000 annual fee—and that it would take effect in less than 24 hours. The next day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified that the $100,000 fee would be a one-time payment, not annual, and would not apply to renewals or extensions.
Many questions still remain. To help make sense of the H-1B chaos, I spoke with Minn Kim, a former venture capitalist and the founder of Lighthouse, a company that helps start-up workers “get a U.S. work visa fast,” as she puts it. Kim has written extensively about the need for skilled immigration to the United States, and she explained what the H-1B news means for immigrant and American workers—and what the mood is like in Silicon Valley right now.
I’ll cut to the chase. What’s going on here?
Minn Kim: I think this is probably a long time coming. It’s an important, incremental step for a visa program that has existed for decades but has faced a tremendous amount of scrutiny and, frankly, some amounts of abuse. And so I think this is directionally a great step in curbing some of the concerns that people on both sides of the political aisle have had with the program at large.
